Mongrel Minister Of Nat/​security Puts Foot In His Stupid Mouth Once Again

As a for­mer police offi­cer, I am par­tic­u­lar­ly incensed when a police offi­cer is attacked and hurt or worse just for doing his or her job.
This is not about whether or not we agree with every­thing the police does, but about that offi­cer’s expec­ta­tion that he or she will return home safe­ly after their shift as they ought to.
That is not too much to ask. Even sol­diers on a bat­tle­field do their lev­el best to return from wars, police offi­cers do too.

And so over the years, one of the things that I have per­son­al­ly ham­mered home to read­ers and to the JCF lead­er­ship,(assum­ing that they do read) is the need for more and bet­ter train­ing which reflects the seri­ous­ness of the times.
To that end, many of my friends and even some of my most ded­i­cat­ed read­ers have dis­agreed with me on the lev­el of train­ing being afford­ed new recruits to the JCF.
I con­tend that not only is the train­ing archa­ic and use­less, but train­ing should be ongo­ing for offi­cers, espe­cial­ly as it relates to firearms, tac­tics, and threat assess­ments.
Police offi­cers should have a well laid out Gymnasium with all of the mod­ern ameni­ties at the acad­e­my. Strength and fit­ness train­ing should be a part of the recruit train­ing.
More than any­thing else, the archa­ic and use­less drills ought to be a thing of the past.

While we talk about police train­ing it also makes sense to expand on the dif­fi­cul­ty which lies in polic­ing Jamaica.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, even with­in the CARICOM region, police offi­cials are crit­i­cal of Jamaicans and their lack of respect for the rule of law.
And so it is not out of the ordi­nary to hear tall tales (many unfound­ed) of the way Jamaicans are treat­ed by law enforce­ment offi­cials whether it’s in the Cayman Islands, Barbados, Trinidad, and Tobago or wher­ev­er?
That is not to say that the stig­ma attached to us Jamaicans does not neg­a­tive­ly affect folks who may be inno­cent, or at best, not as guilty. 

The dif­fi­cul­ties of which I speak are var­ied and many, but I will list a few here which may in some cas­es be unique to Jamaica.

(1) TERRAIN
Jamaica is a par­tic­u­lar­ly hilly coun­try This is in many respects unri­valed in our region. The chal­lenges which come with the hilly ter­rain are many, but it makes the task of appre­hend­ing dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals that much more dif­fi­cult.
Like the fave­las in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the ter­rain makes enforce­ment a night­mare to vary­ing degrees.

(2)POLITICS
Over the years the cor­ro­sive influ­ence and con­trol Politics has had over law enforce­ment in our coun­try have prob­a­bly had the most dis­as­trous con­se­quences to date.
Sadly, those who are at the top of the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus are in many cas­es the most sus­pect when it comes to how nation­al secu­ri­ty secrets are han­dled (see how Christopher Duddus Coke learned that the Americans want­ed him extradited).

The present Minister of National Security Horace Chang, who said he inher­it­ed a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny (speak­ing of the police depart­ment). He cer­tain­ly could not wait to place his foot in his stu­pid mouth on the Spaldings shoot­ing.
Speaking to a Lion’s Club of Kingston lun­cheon at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel Chang dived into the mat­ter which is fresh and still under inves­ti­ga­tions
“Had he had any of the equip­ment of mod­ern polic­ing, he could have been eas­i­ly trained that in the face of a hos­tile crowd of ven­dors and taxi dri­vers who can be quite aggres­sive to the police, to use one of the non-lethal weapons to inter­cept and con­trol the crowd.” .

(a) The fuck­ing idiot is the Minister respon­si­ble for the police, so if they are lack­ing equip­ment he is respon­si­ble.
(b) Secondly, this was not about crowd con­trol, it was a case where a uni­formed police offi­cer was vio­lent­ly attacked.
Chang’s assess­ment is rub­bish, it has no bear­ing on what we have seen on that video.
“The guns would be for a killer crowd. Those (the absent tools) are basic equip­ment and we have not equipped our police force effec­tive­ly.”
In the esti­ma­tion of this Minister of National Security, the crowd which destroyed a police ser­vice vehi­cle, and forced two offi­cers to seek refuge in a super­mar­ket before they were res­cued, was not a killer crowd.
This could be han­dled with a can­is­ter of pep­per spray and a baton.[sic]
These are the abject fools who are run­ning our coun­try. These are the law­mak­ers. Now do you need to ask why Jamaica is so fucked up?